Delphi 2005

I got my hands on the demo-version of Delphi 2005 (download it here), and I actually have configured the beast already, so I have my usual environement to work on PopScan with it. These are my first impressions (I won’t talk about this File-Download-Window-Popping-Up Problem as all know it’s a nasty problem with a security-patch from Microsoft which will soon be fixed. Read about it here on Steves blog

It takes quite some time to start up. After removing the Delphi.NET and c# personalities (don’t need them), it starts about as fast, als my Delphi 7 did. Just a little bit slower

The compiler got faster, if you ask me.

Besides the great new features Borland is talking about, there are very nice usability-tunings everywhere which make working quite a bit easier.

The VCL form designer is extremely slow on my machine. Just displaying the PopScan Main Form within the designer takes nearly 10 Seconds. Delphi 7 does that instantly.

The debugger is slower too, which certainly has to do with the many great feature additions. I can live with that.

It’s extremely compatible to Delphi 7: I could install every single third party component without any problems. This is quite impressive considering Delphi 2005 is quite a rewrite.

While I like the new docked form designer, there’s one usability-problem with it: When you have components that use their own property editors (like Toolbar 2000), those editors are opened in their own window (understandable). Now, if you select a button in the component editor and then click the Project inspector to change a property, the Delphi Main Window will cover the property editor rendring it invisible. An easy fix would be to define the property editor always-on-top – a better fix would be integrating it somewhere in the IDE

Even JCLDebug could be compiled and installed (even the IDE Expert did work, though you have to manually install it)

All in all, this release of Delphi is a very great release providing the user with a ton of new features and fixes to long-standing usability problems (so long that you got used to them and now are missing them…). I have not expirienced any crashes so far (besides the one where the expat-parser of a debugged application took all the ram on my system, but I don’t blame Delphi for that), which is very nice.

Now, if only the beast could be made to run a bit faster (which will be done, I’d say, it’s the best Delphi since Delphi 2 which means quite a lot…

Thanks Borland.

PS: I know that it’s currently more in fashion to bash Borland and to whine about everything they do. And for the fourth consecutive year now I read posting about Delphi’s impending doom everywhere on the net. But consider this: Delphi still is the only RAD tool out there producing 100% native windows executables. And it still has one of the most lively communities I know of in the Windows-world. Even if Borland would kill off delphi, I’m quite certain, it will not go so easily. Not with this community.

On and speaking of killing off delphi: Seeing this great release of Delphi 2005, I am quite assured that Borland will continue supporting us.